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AT&T to cut off some customers' service in piracy crackdown

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Re: AT&T to cut off some customers' service in piracy crackdown

#131

Post by Natsu »

gcbw2 wrote: post #128
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s a website that is run by both the entertainment industry and the ISPs, they’re working together The entertainment industry wants takedowns eagerly enforced. The ISPs don't want to do work. Ignoring complaints is the predictable outcome. (As is AT&T becoming stricter about copyright enforcement after buying a content company.)

"self regulation"

I don't think many people yet realize that this is what people are arguing for every time they say it's okay for a private company to not do business with whoever they dislike.

Re: AT&T to cut off some customers' service in piracy crackdown

#132

Post by adventured »

jrockway wrote: post #24

I wonder when this will spread to other industries? Say someone doesn't pay their newspaper bill. Maybe contact their water company and ask them to shut off their water, to encourage them to pay. It's worth a try, right? I get why content rights owners go to the ISP to get at the ISP's customers who are doing things they don't like. I don't get why ISPs play along. It's extra work, and it makes the customer hate the…

> Say someone doesn't pay their newspaper bill. Maybe contact their water company and ask them to shut off their water, to encourage them to pay. It's worth a try, right?

I can do better than that.

Where I live in the US, if you don't pay your water bill, the government can take your home in a forced forfeiture. They put it up for auction to pay for the water bill. If that water bill is for $800 and the home has $300,000 of equity, doesn't matter, they'll steal it just the same.

The benefit of having a lot of guns behind you and the legal right to use deadly force to steal property.

Re: AT&T to cut off some customers' service in piracy crackdown

#133

Post by SimplePeople »

MysticFear wrote: post #36
ronnier wrote: post #35

How does this differ from the deplatforming we've recently seen with Twitter, Apple app store, Gab from hosting providers, facebook, youtube, etc?

People actually are accused of doing something illegal by law.

Accused or convicted?

Re: AT&T to cut off some customers' service in piracy crackdown

#135

Post by myegorov »

MysticFear wrote: post #36
ronnier wrote: post #35

How does this differ from the deplatforming we've recently seen with Twitter, Apple app store, Gab from hosting providers, facebook, youtube, etc?

People actually are accused of doing something illegal by law.

Not too long ago, homosexuality was criminalized.

Re: AT&T to cut off some customers' service in piracy crackdown

#136

Post by AnthonyMouse »

clairity wrote: post #124
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and yet, target can mark up their products higher on average than the competitors you named Costco and Amazon have lower unit margins because they charge annually for memberships or Prime. Walmart has lower nominal markups because they don't use promotions, so all their nominal markups are their actual markups rather than regularly getting eroded by promotions. When it all shakes out, the thing that costs ~$15 at T…

the misconceptions you hold about marketing and unit economics are hard to work through here given the limited time and space. i'll just note that branding is first and foremost about pricing power. lower cost forms of marketing are employed to encourage volume.

Branding isn't pricing power. If you see a McDonald's, you know what's in there. It may not be a premium product, but it's consistent, and consistency is worth something.

Buying a branded product is really buying two separate products. One is the commodity and the other is certification of the commodity by the brand. People might pay more for a product certified to be a known quantity than one that isn't, but that isn't the same as market power because certification can be a commodity too. Some random hole in the wall can't compete with McDonald's on being known and consistent, but Burger King and Wendy's can, which is sufficient to keep their prices in check.

Charging more because you're providing something some competitors don't have is not market power when some different competitors do have it.

Re: AT&T to cut off some customers' service in piracy crackdown

#137

Post by beezischillin »

ronnier wrote: post #35

How does this differ from the deplatforming we've recently seen with Twitter, Apple app store, Gab from hosting providers, facebook, youtube, etc?

The piracy issue is very similar to the recent Internet censorship we've seen. A very similar thing happened to the PirateBay (and it still happens to this day), who were persecuted off the internet initially by corporations leveraging politicians to push a website offline that was legal in their home country.

Now I'm not saying it's completely the same, but often it seems like the piracy takedowns set up the playbook to censoring things that often affect lots of peoples' lives.

I'm very vary of corporate censorship since it's an easy next step for politics and the government to start wielding it against the people. And that could be disastrous.

Re: AT&T to cut off some customers' service in piracy crackdown

#138

Post by aerotwelve »

jedberg wrote: post #81
jrockway wrote: post #24

I wonder when this will spread to other industries? Say someone doesn't pay their newspaper bill. Maybe contact their water company and ask them to shut off their water, to encourage them to pay. It's worth a try, right? I get why content rights owners go to the ISP to get at the ISP's customers who are doing things they don't like. I don't get why ISPs play along. It's extra work, and it makes the customer hate the…

The ISPs are common carries, so they have to play along with the rights owners. A better analogy would be getting USPS to stop coming to your house when the content creators find out you've been mailing pressed DVDs from your house. The difference of course is that you could switch to UPS or FedEx. For 72% of the country, you can't switch ISPs.

I believe the obligation to play along with rights holders comes from the DMCA's safe harbor provision, (which limits an ISP's liability for copyright infringement that occurs over their network provided they cooperate with takedown notices), not from the property of being common carriers. Especially since FCC has ruled cable internet providers are no longer Title II services.

Re: AT&T to cut off some customers' service in piracy crackdown

#139

Post by dreamcompiler »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #98
eiaoa wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what happens if your service is cut in error. Do you trust ATT to have a fair, easy appeals process? This is where many of the arguments against government regulation break down. If you take government out of the picture, you're still left dealing with massive institutions and bureaucratic regulations. The main difference is that those institutions are even less accountable to the average person than the government…

> This is where many of the arguments against government regulation break down. If you take government out of the picture, you're still left dealing with massive institutions and bureaucratic regulations. This is only true of uncompetitive markets. If Target refused to sell you clothes because someone made a false copyright infringement claim against you, you would laugh in their face and go shop at any of a thousand…

> Moreover, in many cases the regulations are what make markets uncompetitive.

Regulation is necessary to prevent monopolies, and monopolies by definition make markets uncompetitive. Antitrust regulation protects capitalism from itself. Unfortunately the Antitrust division of the Justice Department has not been doing its job for several decades.

Re: AT&T to cut off some customers' service in piracy crackdown

#140

Post by londons_explore »

ams6110 wrote: post #101
obblekk wrote: post #5

I’m sure many of us believe in following and enforcing laws (even flawed laws like 150yr copyright), but are still made uneasy by this development. I think the source of that discomfort is - what happens if your service is cut in error. Do you trust ATT to have a fair, easy appeals process? Competition in the form of space internet can’t come soon enough, not to enable pirates, but to ensure normal people have reason…

AT&T is not going to be too eager to cut your service. They want your $50 - $150/month (or more) if they can get it. FTA: The bottom line: Very few copyright infringers ever get booted from their broadband provider, pointing to the severity of these cases and the number of steps at which the customer is told they are violating copyright before they are cut off from AT&T's service. Copyright infringers are often illeg…

It's in AT&T's interest to cut off 'unlimited' users who use a large proportion of their network bandwidth.

Using copyright claims to do that sounds like a smart plan.

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